Investigation Missions

mistformsquirrel

So, I've been playing a certain other MMO of late in addition to CO; The Secret World. In doing so I've come across a very very interesting type of mission I've not seen in any other game, and I think it'd fit CO like a glove to be honest.

Investigation missions work like this: You are given clues, hints, pointers... but no minimap objective to go run to immediately. There are puzzles to solve and clues to put together in order to advance. This I feel works extremely well for a superhero game as, after all, most heroes end up doing some detective work now and again.

Now, in The Secret World, a lot of these clues are online in the real world - you have to go hunting across fake blogs and whatnot for the information; that works well there but I'm not sure CO would pull it off so deftly... we could however have a variation where you need to work with clues based entirely in-game and based on in-game lore. It'd also be an excellent chance to improve the atmosphere of the game by forcing us to engage with the lore to succeed.

< . .> Anyways it's just an idea, but I think it'd be a nice one.

klitty

Nice idea, i would love to have this kind of missions.

But your average Co player cannot be bothered to follow quest markers, read the darn mission and try to figure what to do next

chalupaoffury

haha check zone for a few minutes and see how many people ask how to do the Nighthawk missions. The quest outright tells you, there are big circles on the map, and STILL people have no idea. Yeah, I love the idea, but I see it causing more problems than anything.

bioshrike

I have nothing against the idea of investigation missions, but I play CO to be able to do the things I *can't* do in real life. I can go online in real life and look stuff up - I'd rather shoot lightning or fly in a superhero MMO.

I'm also not a huge fan of a game that gives you stats, powers, and abilities, then asks you to do stuff with said character that isn't based on any of that...

lotar295

Well,I'd love to go around MC,find a couple clues to the whereabouts of some crime lord or gang,beating members up all the way through it at the crime scenes possibly,and eventually reaching the crime lord or big boss,fight him/her,win and do it again

mistformsquirrel

@Bioshrike

I wasn't meaning to clone it from The Secret World, with all the online stuff; that wouldn't make a lot of sense in CO.

What I mean is, for example, following a trail of muddy bootprints to a car, you find inside the car, a map, on the map is a location, you go to the location and you discover a door ajar - behind the door is a body, and a bloody weapon.

You find a theater ticket in the body's pocket, and there's a phonebook nearby where you can look up the theater. The weapon, a hammer, has a sticker on it that tells you it came from a local hardware store - so you can also go check out that lead.

In the end, whichever lead you follow to the end, you discover the killer and bring them to justice.

I want to emphasize that at no point are you told "Follow the muddy bootprints" or "Examine the body" - you have to figure that out yourself.

Now that said there's no reason they couldn't attach a small suite of skills to this kind of system; skills that would improve as you investigate, and would be a benefit because you'd notice say.. a clue light up from further away. With no skill, you have to stand on top of it before it'll glow - with max skill, you'll see it glowing at a fair distance (though still less than you would with normal glowies).

Err, am I making sense? <~_~>; I feel like I didn't explain things very well initially.

bioshrike

mistformsquirrel wrote: »

@Bioshrike

I wasn't meaning to clone it from The Secret World, with all the online stuff; that wouldn't make a lot of sense in CO.

What I mean is, for example, following a trail of muddy bootprints to a car, you find inside the car, a map, on the map is a location, you go to the location and you discover a door ajar - behind the door is a body, and a bloody weapon.

You find a theater ticket in the body's pocket, and there's a phonebook nearby where you can look up the theater. The weapon, a hammer, has a sticker on it that tells you it came from a local hardware store - so you can also go check out that lead.

In the end, whichever lead you follow to the end, you discover the killer and bring them to justice.

I want to emphasize that at no point are you told "Follow the muddy bootprints" or "Examine the body" - you have to figure that out yourself.

Now that said there's no reason they couldn't attach a small suite of skills to this kind of system; skills that would improve as you investigate, and would be a benefit because you'd notice say.. a clue light up from further away. With no skill, you have to stand on top of it before it'll glow - with max skill, you'll see it glowing at a fair distance (though still less than you would with normal glowies).

Err, am I making sense? <~_~>; I feel like I didn't explain things very well initially.

But, see, here's the thing - people will simply figure out where the final instance is and go there directly, or if the system requires you to hit the various "stops" along the way, then they'd just go there.

That isn't to say that the idea doesn't have merit - it's just that it'd probably be something that went mostly unused, as most players would *want* that neat and clear mission marker.